42° TORINO FILM FESTIVAL
INTERNATIONAL DOCUMENTARIES COMPETITION
A SUDDEN GLIMPSE TO DEEPER THINGS
by Mark Cousins
Country: UK
Year: 2024
Duration: 90'
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham was a painter, a visionary, an artist. She saw the world in a unique way. One day in May 1949, Barns-Graham, then 36 years old and an emerging figure in the modernist St. Ives group of artists, climbed the Grindelwald glacier in Switzerland. She experienced an epiphany which rewired her brain and transformed her art. She spent the rest of her life painting it. Through a cinematic immersion into her art and life, filmmaker Mark Cousins explores themes of gender, neurodiversity, climate change, and the mysteries of creativity from youth to old age.
Biography
film director
Mark Cousins
(Coventry, 1965) is a director and a writer. He has directed a series of works dedicated to the history of cinema (The Story of Film: An Odyssey, The Story of Film: A New Generation, What is This Film Called Love?, Life May Be, A Story of Children and Film, The Eyes of Orson Welles), and other documentaries shot all around the world (I Am Belfast, Atomic, Living in Dread and Promise, Stockholm, My Love), presented at festivals such as Cannes, Berlin , Sundance and Venice. He won the Prix Italia, a Peabody, the Stanley Kubrick Award and the European Film Award for Innovative Storytelling for lifetime achievement. His work as a film scholar continued with some works created with Tilda Swinton and with publications such as Imagining Reality: The Faber Book of Documentary and The Story of Looking, the latter also becoming a film. In 2022 he presented The March on Rome at the Venice Days.
FILMOGRAFIA
Gulf War: Scottish Eye (mm, doc, tv, 1990), Another Journey by Train (doc, tv, coregia Mark Forrest, 1993), I Know Where I’m Going! (mm, doc, tv, 1994), Ian Hamilton Finlay: In a Wee Way (coregia Mark Forrest, mm, doc, tv, 1996), I Remember IKWIG (mm, doc, tv, 1996), Scene by Scene (doc, tv, 1997–2001), Cinema Iran (doc, tv, 2005), On the Road with Kiarostami (doc, cm, tv, 2005), First Impressions (cm, doc, 2008), The New Ten Commandments: Kenny Richie (coregia Irvine Welsh, doc, tv, 2008), The New Ten Commandments: 8½ (coregia Tilda Swinton, doc, tv, 2008), The New Ten Commandments (ep, doc, tv, 2008), The First Movie (doc, 2009), The Story of Film: An Odyssey (doc, 2011), 60 Seconds of Solitude in Year Zero (doc, 2011), What is this Film Called Love? (doc, 2012), Dear Georges Melies (coregia Tilda Swinton, doc, 2013), Here be Dragons (doc, 2013), A Story of Children and Film (doc, 2013), Homeless (cm, doc, 2014), The Wind in the Trees (cm, doc, 2014), The Place (mm, doc, 2014), The Big Shave Backwards (cm, 2014), Life May Be (coregia Mania Akbari, doc, 2014), The Oar and the Winnowing Fan (tv, doc, 2014), But Then Again, Too Few to Mention (cm, doc, 2014), The Film That Buys the Cinema (doc, 2014), 6 Desires: D. H. Lawrence and Sardinia Writer (doc, 2014), The Place (mm, doc, 2014), Dear John Grierson (cm, doc, 2014), Your Eyes Flash Solemnly with Hate Writer and director (cm, doc, 2015), I Am Belfast (doc, 2015), Atomic, Living in Dread and Promise (doc, 2015), Stockholm, My Love (doc, 2016), Bigger than The Shining (doc, 2016), Eisenstein on Lawrence (cm, doc, 2016), Storm in My Heart (doc, 2017), The Eyes of Orson Welles (doc, 2017), Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema (doc, 2019), Alexander’s Film (cm, doc, 2020), 40 Days to Learn Film (doc, 2020), This Violation (cm, doc, 2020), Dear Paul Schrader (cm, doc, 2020), The Storms of Jeremy Thomas (doc, 2021), The Story of Looking (doc, 2021), The Story of Film: A New Generation (doc, 2021), Marcia su Roma (doc, 2022), A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things (doc, 2024).
Declaration
film director
“This is be no conventional chronological biopic. As I mentioned above, its approach is very unusual – it is about a brain and a glacier. Two fascinating things, two complex things. I’ve filmed with lens adaptations to the Leicas on my mobile phone, to give crystal clear 4k subjective imagery. I’ve used a great new 16mm film app. I’ve lashed multiple cameras together to show multiple ways of seeing. People who have followed my work will know that looking (especially since a recent eye operation which I filmed) has been a central theme in my movies. There are no talking heads in A Sudden Glimpse of Deeper Things. It is a feast of beautiful images – Willie’s paintings, the landscapes of Orkney, the Alps, St Ives, St Andrews and Italy, filmed in multiple formats.”
Cast
& Credits
DIRECTOR, SCREENPLAY, CINEMATOGRAPHY: Mark Cousins. EDITING: Timo Langer. MUSIC: Linda Buckley. SOUND: Ali Murray. VOICES: Tilda Swinton, Mary Bell, Maggie Gray, Laura Bomio. PRODUCTION: Mary Bell, Adam Dawtrey for Bofa production.
CONTACT: I Wonder distribution@iwonderpictures.it
